. . . the TSA Theory of Gradual Habituation: Organizations like the TSA have worked to soften us up, to make us accustomed to the gradual theft of our right to privacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if clever government bureaucrats looked at the public’s bovine-like acceptance of its collective loss of dignity at the nation’s airports and realized that massive, invasive data collection wouldn’t spark a revolution.

. . . And if it can’t protect its own secrets, what makes it competent to protect ours? Let’s assume that the NSA one day will be, as a matter of course, sweeping up medical records, or records of all purchases made on Amazon.com, in its hunt for patterns of I-don’t-know-what. Would you trust the NSA to keep those records private? Of course not. How could you?

Unfortunately, he still bangs the Big-Scary-Muslims-Are-Everywhere! drum, but he’s at least connecting a few dots. Would that more Americans do likewise.

*2015 UPDATE: Still no word from TSA on public comments*

The public comment period on the TSA's electronic strip-search scanners and "pat-downs" closed on June 25, 2013. That public comment period had been ordered by the courts, an order the TSA ignored for almost two years before it finally complied. The agency must issue a report on the many thousands (or more?) of comments it received. Yet here it is 2015 and still no report. If it ever complies with the requirement to issue that report, TSA News will let you know.

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